Grub Street Grub Street San Francisco

Maggie Nemser founded BlackBoardEats last year and New York quickly ate up the exclusive restaurant deals available in their weekly email blast. The company has since added BlackBoard Everywhere, offering national product and travel deals, and expanded to Los Angeles and San Francisco, where participating restaurants have been inundated with business from the discount-hungry populace, all of whom have only a month to use their discount code. Grub Street grabbed a minute with Nemser — who formerly was the editor at Yahoo! Food — to see how the response has been different in the three cities, and to find out which restaurants spent those 30 days totally in the weeds.

As earlier discussed, Restaurant Michael Mina at the St. Francis is morphing into one of his steakhouse concepts, Bourbon Steak, previously seen in Miami and D.C. and featuring his signature butter-poached, slow-roasted steaks. Grub Street just received the official press release, giving the opening date of October 7, with Michael Mina shuttering for the makeover in mid-September. Mina is quoted saying, "I have crafted a menu that is unique and distinctive to the Bourbon Steak in San Francisco, focusing on California product, producers and farmers." Look for Michael Mina to reopen just a few weeks later, in mid-October, in the former Aqua space (252 California) with a more casual dining vibe.

Earlier: Michael Mina Announces Plans for Aqua and His Eponymous Restaurant [Grub Street]

During an inspection by the San Francisco Public Health Department at culty vegan oasis Café Gratitude on July 15, a "juvenile rat" ran between the legs of the inspector, and he naturally forced the place to shut down to clean up their act, as Mission Local reports. The restaurant only closed for 24 hours for "vermin abatement," but it turns out that San Francisco doesn't require any sort of public posting about the closure or the reason for it, nor do they have any minimum requirement for how long a place gets shuttered when they're crawling with rats! New York, L.A., and other cities across the country have much stricter rules about disclosing the reasons for a health department closure, while in S.F. an anonymous health department official admits that it is not uncommon for a restaurant simply to put up a sign that says "closed for renovations," and get away with it. Really, San Francisco?

SF Rats Have It Easy [Mission Local]